New Orleans police clash with protesters

By The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS, La. — After violent clashes with police at City Hall, protesters vowed that the fight over a plan to demolish 218 public housing buildings for the poor was far from over, both in the courts and on the streets.

Protesters fall to the ground as New Orleans Police re-lock a gate outside the New Orleans City Council chambers, Thursday, (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

On Thursday, police used chemical spray and stun guns on protesters who tried to force their way into a City Council meeting where the members voted unanimously to allow the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to demolish 4,500 public housing units.

The vote allows demolition crews to begin tearing down the buildings within weeks unless they are blocked in the courts. Lawyers fighting the demolition say they have not exhausted their legal options.

Endesha Juakali, a protest leader arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace, said the confrontation with the council was not the last breath from protesters.

''For everything they do, we have to make them pay a political consequence,'' Juakali said. He vowed that when the bulldozers try to demolish the St. Bernard complex, ''it's going to be an all out effort.''

For weeks, protesters have been gearing up to battle with bulldozers and have discussed a variety of tactics, including lying in front of the machinery.

Thursday's confrontation was the most violent and tense of a string of protests that have brought attention to the plight of a growing number of homeless and the lack of inexpensive housing for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Jerry Brown, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said demolition crews should be able to get to work soon, although some final details may need to be hammered out and presented to city officials before that can happen.

Developers chosen by HUD to do the $700 million in redevelopment work said they were eager to get started and that the protracted fight over demolitions has stood in the way of building better communities.

''To begin moving forward you need to do the demolition,'' said James Kelly, president and CEO of Providence Community Housing, a group associated with the Catholic church and chosen to redevelop the Lafitte housing complex.

Police said 15 people were arrested on charges ranging from battery to disorderly conduct. Four people were taken to hospitals -- two of them women who had been stunned with Tasers -- and five others were injured and treated on the scene, police said. All four in the hospital were stable, police said.

Protesters said they pushed against the iron gates that kept them out of the building because the Housing Authority of New Orleans had disproportionately allowed supporters of the demolition to pack the council's chambers. Dozens tried to force their way in.

At the peak of the confusion, some 70 protesters were facing about a dozen mounted police and 40 more law enforcement officers on foot.

One woman was sprayed by police and dragged from the gates; emergency workers took her away on a stretcher. Another woman said she was stunned by officers, and still had what appeared to be a Taser wire hanging from her shirt.

''I was just standing, trying to get into my City Council meeting,'' said the dazed woman, Kim Ellis, who was taken away in an ambulance.

''Is this what democracy looks like?'' Bill Quigley, a Loyola University law professor who opposes demolition, said as he held a strand of Taser wire he said had been shot into another of the protesters.

Most of the units HUD plans to demolish are vacant, and many suffered heavy damage in Katrina, but those who oppose their demolition say they should be improved instead.

Critics of the plan say it will drive poor people from neighborhoods where they have lived for generations, but HUD denies that and says the plan will create an equal amount of affordable housing as existed before Katrina hit.

The council promised to monitor the redevelopment and make sure the poor have places to come back to, but those assurances did little to assuage opponents.

''The vote was already a done deal,'' the Rev. Marshall Truehill said. ''There were no concessions.''

Copyright Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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